Dubious positives
by sarakirai
Summary: Two little words: "I'm pregnant." - in which Seo gives acting a shot. [warnings: intensely speculative fiction/ seowaka canon AU]


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><p>

**[title] **

Dubious positives

**[summary] **

Two little words: "I'm pregnant."

In which Seo gives acting a shot.

[warnings: intensely speculative fiction, very off track, probably OOC - seowaka canon AU]

**[notes]**

Disclaimer: I do not own GSNK

The manga is all about the gags, really, so this is just my take on the Seo/Wakamatsu relationship from a more serious slant. They aren't friends, technically, and the ship is more like a sampan sometimes (same goes for all the other main couples) /cough cough/

Their so-called relationship isn't going anywhere anytime soon in canon, but if they did start getting somewhere, it could be from a starting point like this, i think. How they might act if they were woefully out of their depth. It makes sense to look at these things from a less crack-tinged POV, anyway, because comedy is essentially tragedy that ends well.

Hope you guys enjoy reading this little experiment :)))

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It's all Kashima's fault, at the end of the day.

The school prince's offer of not attempting to sing for an entire month was too tempting for Seo to pass up, and before she knew it she was persuaded to give acting a shot in exchange, just to seal the deal. There hadn't been any time to protest before she'd been pulled into concocting some ridiculous scenario for her to enact, or rather initiate, since her lines after the prompt were all going to be impromptu and based off whatever responses she got from her partner. Reactionary, that is.

And since she didn't want to use the lines Kashima had given her on Chiyo-chan or her elder brother, that really left only one person, in her eyes. Wakamatsu Hirotaka, that's who, and no one else; a pretty safe choice in her opinion, because he was easy going and easy to get hold of – even if everything _should_ go south, she has the feeling that it won't be quite so bad if it's with him. She's always thought of him as a nice boy – hell, everyone who knows him has always thought of him as a nice boy – and so she's guessing he won't react too badly to what she's going to have to say to him. As far as is possible, really. Even measured against the yardstick of all other unintentionally insensitive, provocative, or rude statements she's made in casual conversation (according to her victims friends), this scripted one takes the cake in terms of shock value.

Two little words: "I'm pregnant."

Just two little words, but they're surprisingly hard for her to force past her lips. Perhaps because she's never bothered with trying to put up false fronts before and now she has to do it doubly: to act, and also to act like she isn't acting. It all makes her head spin, and she gets so caught up in trying to squeeze the words out of her suddenly dry throat that she fails to notice that she's forgotten all about anything else. Like how Wakamatsu's been giving her quizzically concerned yet anxiously restive looks for the ten minutes during which she's been brooding silently while attempting to _do this shit_.

Fortunately for Seo, her hesitation in speaking suits the atmosphere that she's supposed to be creating, in light of the coming fake bombshell to be dropped.

"Erm, Seo-senpai," Wakamatsu edges into the heavy silence between them, "w-what exactly is it you wanted to say? I'd like to be on my way home as soon as possible, please."

In an ideal world, given this scenario, she would take a deep breath, fiddle with the pleats in her uniform skirt, squeeze her eyes tightly shut – then whip her head up to look him straight in the eyes as she finally blurts out the dreaded phrase. But of course that isn't what happens.

"I'm pregnant," she says baldly, and it slams into reality, connotations and consequences and all (after which she proceeds to mentally beat herself up for that shitty delivery – why, Kashima would probably say it was as shitty as her own ghastly attempts at singing).

"You're _what_?" he screeches, completely thrown off balance.

Incidentally, that one exclamation of his is jarring enough to send the birds perched on the windowsill wheeling into the sky, a fact that Seo duly notes for use in further encounters against him. No, no, he was totally not expecting this when he'd found Seo loitering in the hallway nearest the first-year section after school and then been grabbed by the sleeve and dragged into her now-empty classroom to hear something she had to say to him. Taking his cue from the sum of all previous conversations with his senpai, Wakamatsu had been anticipating an invitation to the movies or some amusement park, an inquiry about whether the latest bruise she'd given him at this week's practice had stopped throbbing yet – something else, why, anything else.

Something he'd know how to react properly to, at the very least. He peers at her reluctantly, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth, as if trying to ascertain the truth of her words.

"I'm pregnant," she repeats, fighting valiantly to keep her gaze steady on his face – she normally likes drinking the sight of him in, it's true, but right now she's afraid of that angelic face, the soft gaze, the limpid blue. There's a terrible moment when they stare straight into each other's eyes. And it stretches on, Seo thinking that the ruse must have been seen through or maybe hoping that the development of this farce could be truncated right there and then; Wakamatsu on the other hand is completely at a loss, unable to rip his eyes from her face, which he guesses is mirroring the strangely stiff set to his facial muscles.

He shuts his lids with a sigh, brings the palm of his right hand up and runs it over his pale features.

"Please tell me today is April fools or something," he groans, and she clicks her tongue at him without even thinking. "Not even close, Waka. Valentine's day isn't even over yet."

The words that come running out of her mouth on autopilot are the sort of thing she'd say in a typical conversation. They don't fit in the charged air of this room, this moment in time. You know that sickening feeling you get when you feel like you've just said something wrong? Where the whole world kind of spins slower and everything settles into sluggish rhythm, taunting you over how quickly that misstep slipped past your lips and that no matter how hard you try _now_, there's no taking them back. Before this, she didn't even know what awkward really meant: oh, look, another first time thing. Seo lasers her stare onto the far wall over Wkamatsu's shoulder, unwilling and unable to drag her eyes back to his face, to inspect it for any discernible reaction – positive, negative?

She pulls her scattered thoughts back together and tries again. How would she be feeling if she had to tell him something like this for real? She has no idea what it feels like yet to hold close an uncomfortable truth as an enormous stone in her chest, no idea what it means to have to keep a secret under wraps; until the tension builds up into a razor sharp blade that cuts gashes into her skin and lets the words bleed out. At least, that's how Kashima says a pregnant teenage girl is generally going to be like, when it comes to emotional state of mind and telling other people.

Good heavens, why did she pick Waka in the first place? Her mind zeroes in on that question. Even if she doesn't know why she went with him, she sure as hell isn't going to regret that she went with him. It pushes her to give _convincing_ a shot. Though it no longer feels like she's acting when she says that he is essentially the first person she would confide in if not for her one close friend, her family.

"I don't know, I just –" she snaps off, now looking resolutely out of the window. Wakamatsu thinks that this must be the first time he's ever been in her company so long and felt so little of her stare weighing on him; he's gotten so used to the familiar weight that follows him around, warming him uncomfortably where it rests now and then on the back of his head, his side profile, the rivers of sweat that course over his neck in practice.

His eyes follow hers, skittering down the line of her sight. Seo's gaze switches to his shoes, the green toecaps. Green lights, perhaps. He waits for her to continue speaking, gaze travelling now between his own feet and her lips, slowly traversing the distance between the two points. They curl hesitantly up over the white of her teeth, twist into a grimace, and shape themselves around words once more.

"Felt like I had to tell someone. Felt like I could tell you," she enunciates cautiously, testing the waters. He stiffens, spine going even more rigid.

_Of_ _course_. "But maybe this was another mistake," she mutters, words trailing off into the pregnant silence (pun totally intended).

Her eyes travel upwards along the length of his long legs and then some, gaze drawn up inexorably towards his face; she watches the movement of his Adam's apple when he clears his throat, swallows with difficulty before speaking again. "Oh," he bites out, immensely uncomfortable, "b-but are you absolutely sure, Seo-senpai?"

Seo smiles at him, bitter and wide and slow.

It's a terrible face to be making, as terrible as the decision to get this nonsense started. She still had time to turn back, after all, until she'd gone and blurted out those two little words. When she could have said something else instead, like "have lunch with me" or "can we study together" or "let's play one-on-one sometime" – but _no_, she'd gone and said "I'm pregnant." Well.

At least it's over for now. Her facial muscles are starting to twitch, though, and she suddenly wants Waka out of there, wants him as far away from her as possible, wants to be left alone for a while to wallow in this uncharacteristic sentiment; to dispense with the façade and try not to buckle when the doubts close in on her, constricting four walls, no breathing space. Then she won't have to think about what the fuck she was thinking when she agreed to do this.

Wakamatsu's still there, trying so hard not to look at her that it is horribly obvious he wants to look at her. She cannot see the tension, so she ignores it, and cuts through it blindly, blithely.

"You said you were in a rush, didn't you," she remarks, glancing at the clock on the wall, where it hangs above the corner of the chalkboard, near the classroom doors. "You can just go home now. Uh, that's all, I mean. There really isn't anything else to say, right?"

The words stumble and fall in mid-air, struggle to right themselves as they hurtle towards him.

Her face is completely expressionless when he peeks at her, standing frozen in a slouch – the breeze that has stolen in from outside teasing at her skirt, making it billow. Apart from that, Seo doesn't move at all, and he has cause to wonder how someone so dynamic could be reduced to standing silent; she looks a little lost, like she doesn't know what happens from here on out, now that she's confided in him (if that description of events is even accurate). Wakamatsu slowly picks up his school bag and walks towards the door. Seo's still standing by her desk at the back of the classroom, the weak sunlight that enters through the windows hitting her at an angle – she is made half of light, half of shadow. Appropriate for all the little half-truths, half-lies in the half-light.

Ah, Seo has always puzzled him, of course, but this new turn of events is something he could never in a million years have foreseen. They aren't even friends, at least as far as he knows, but here she is taking him aside after school just so she can tell him she's supposedly pregnant; he seriously doesn't know how she could possibly expect him to just leave right now, though of course she won't be thinking of his conscience, she never has given it much thought, has she? – Even though he gives a lot of thought to hers.

In light of all the above, it's rather silly how he feels compelled to, as people commonly put it, _'be there for her'_.

The shadowed amber eyes latch onto him sharply when he calls out across the room, one hand already pushing the sliding doors open to readmit him to the safely neutral space of the corridor. "I'll see you on Monday, Seo-senpai," is his parting shot to her, and then he disappears, as if swallowed up by the warm afternoon air.

The sky is cloudless and blue outside the window, the colour so pure and stretching on so endlessly that it makes her eyes hurt. She can still feel the weight of his last glance on her where she remains in the shadowed interior of the classroom, staring down at the courtyard until she sees his tall figure cross it and leave, swept up by the various sounds and colours of this Friday afternoon.

For a memory, it's just as pure and endless as the sky, stretching her eyes taut and dry from the effort of trying not to blink.

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Kashima swoops over and pulls her aside at lunch the very next day, to inquire as to her darling sensei's progress on the whole acting thing, as well as to add a mite too casually that "if you don't want to, then that's perfectly fine with me, just that it'd be really nice to try it out, don't you think?"

Seo gives her a good punch in the arm at that. "Save your breath," she retorts brusquely, rolling her eyes in frustration. "If you were going to say so then say so earlier, would you? It's kinda too late now."

Kashima's jaw drops at the same time her wild green eyes brighten impossibly and start radiating enraptured sparkles strong enough to make every fangirl in a ten metre radius fall over swooning. Standing amidst the veritable sea of unconscious female, Seo silently thanks Kashima for ensuring relative privacy in which they can conduct their very incriminating conversation – they might as well be standing on a deserted island.

"I already did it, yes," Seo drawls, a little irritably. "And I think it was worth at least two months of your not singing, just saying."

"Oh, don't be like that," Kashima tosses back with a debonair flip of her fringe. "Now, who is it? Please, I beg of you, princess, don't withhold the details from me any longer," she croons charmingly while bent over the hand of one very nonplussed-looking Nozaki who's been pulled out of thin air, a dozen truckloads of sparkles mixed in with prodigious amounts of red rose petals gaudily blanketing the school prince's immediate surroundings.

It's all delightfully comical, and the sight makes Seo laugh, at least until she remembers that she has an escape to be making; as she hightails it down the hallway she yells over her shoulder, "Three guesses who!", and then doesn't look back.

Which is why she misses the marginal widening of two pairs of eyes, only mere fractions of a second too late.

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Seo comes to basketball practice as usual, and Wakamatsu watches her carefully.

On court, she's as full of life as ever, bounding around without a seeming care in the world. That's how she appears on the surface, but his careful scrutiny makes him feel that somehow something's a little off this time, as if she's going at the game with all her exuberance to distract herself, so that she won't have enough energy left afterwards to think unpleasant thoughts. The force she puts into shots fired is, as a result, more lethal than usual – and coupled with his heightened distraction, what they have right there is an instant formula for Wakamatsu's incapacitation at Seo's hands (the usual thing, really – just much, much quicker than would be normal).

She hauls him to the infirmary, like always, and he comes to with her bending over his bedside as she fastens another compress to his aching head; she's biting on her lower lip in concentration, brow delicately furrowed as she affixes bandages to his wound; face mere inches from his; her arms practically framing his face – he's never had the chance to see this before, and he holds his breath in until she notices the heightened colour in his cheeks, slaps him lightly back into life.

"You should be careful, yanno," she says, as she pats the last of the plasters into place, and this time he doesn't miss a beat with his reply. His fingers gently encircle hers and push them away from his forehead, and the seriousness in his eyes cannot be mistaken when he tells her, "That's my line, Seo-senpai."

At first she actually looks confused, and so he is too – "Uh, senpai, do I have to remind you that you're, um, pregnant? Not that you can't play sports if you're pregnant, of course, but you know, you really should watch out for yourself, right? I-I mean, especially with your playing style, just – you know, take it easy for a while…?"

The furrow in her brow smoothens out halfway through his rambling speech, like she's just recalled something that she'd forgotten; then it returns, presumably while she's berating herself for it having slipped her mind in the first place. Her hand is still kind of half in his, and he can feel the light flutter of her pulse, knows when it quickens with a vengeance. "Hey," he whispers into the quiet as he sits up slowly. "How did it hap-who's the father? I-if you don't mind my asking I mean, um, I w-was just curious. You know."

Seo cocks her head to one side and surveys him with blank expression for a long minute, pulls her fingers from the cage of his grasp. It's a little disturbing how they slip through the gaps in his perfectly. "Sorry, Waka," she eventually throws back distractedly. "But I don't know. And I _do_ mind. I mean, guh, whatever, can – can we not talk about this?"

Who can blame him, then, over the dark places his mind instantaneously leaps for.

It shows on his face, it must have shown on his face. Her typically blasé expression seems to waver a little just then, and he can easily imagine that beneath all that outward obliviousness and carefree shrugging is the frail emotion of any other beleaguered teenage girl in such a situation. Seo bites down on the corner of her lip, for all appearances effused with weariness, and he finds himself inexplicably moved. Instinctively his body moves to give comfort, and she looks up in surprise as his large hand engulfs her smaller one, warm and dry fingers that encircle hers tightly and give a small squeeze of comfort. And she does feel comforted by the gesture. How surprising, that something genuine would emerge as an outcome of this scheme.

This time, she's the one who calls out to him as he gathers his bag and makes for the door, to leave. "I – Waka, wait, I, uh –"

Wakamatsu looks back. Seo's face is contorted in something approximately like a strange conflation of guilt, desperation, confusion and gratitude. He doesn't know what the hell that's supposed to mean. She hops off the edge of the mattress and steps forward briskly like she knows what she's doing (either that or she's afraid she'll lose her nerve should she not act fast enough), comes to a stop when they're only a foot apart, facing each other. He breaks the stalemate first, bringing a hand up to rest carefully on the crown of her head. It's a caress modulated to soothe, because he can feel her emotions are on edge, feel her threatening to come apart at the seams, and she seems to need someplace where she can escape from all that. That someplace would appear to be the empty classroom after school where he now always finds her, scribbling on sheets of paper that she never lets him look at, now and then finishing up assignments, keeping largely to herself. Now that he thinks on it, apart from Sakura-senpai, and more recently Kashima-senpai, who does she have around her? Before he came along, she probably went to watch those B-grade sci-fi flicks she adores so much all on her own.

He gets lost in daydreaming of loneliness, inadvertently sends her a wistful smile and whispered words, "I'm here." She raises her head, leaning ever so slightly up into his touch.

"Why are you doing this?" she asks, challengingly.

"It's only right that you should have someone to support you through this," he insists.

"That complicates things, Waka," Seo fires back. "Ah, what the hell." She irritably kicks at the nearest piece of furniture and crosses her arms over her chest, focuses her distant, deadpan gaze on the near reaches of his face once more; ignores his wince at the clatter. "I was just going to say thanks, okay?"

"You're welcome, senpai," he says in return, still keeping his hand on her head, on her hair.

"Go lie down a little longer," she says, "I bet your head still hurts."

"I'll rest at home," he replies. "Are you going home too?"

"I am."

"I'll walk you to the station."

"…You don't have to carry my bag."

"Oh? T-that's a first. Um, I think. Are you sure, though?"

"Shut up and walk, Waka."

"Yes. Okay. L-let's go home."

Seo makes some indistinct hum of agreement, and Wakamatsu almost can't believe he isn't being pulled along by his tie, more than capable of keeping pace with her.

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He finds her napping on the rooftop during lunch, when he goes up to clear his head, and immediately gets to his knees to shake her awake. She cracks her eyes open to the sight of him peering down at her anxiously, his breath sweet on her face.

"You sleep like the dead, Seo-senpai," he solemnly informs her, "I was getting a little worried."

She snorts up at him. "Well, ain't that sweet of you," she mumbles, squinting past the arm she has thrown over her face. "But just let me sleep, 'kay? Bet I look like crap right now."

"No you don't," he sighs, settling down to sit cross-legged on the concrete next to her, "and you should have been in class earlier, anyway."

Seo chooses not to answer, just rolls around on the floor a little before curling her body closer to his and trying to get back to sleep. It's classic evasive behaviour, even if she doesn't know it, and Wakamatsu peers down at her, corners of his lips pulled south.

"Senpai, this isn't fair at all," Wakamatsu abruptly opens his mouth to protest, "because I had to listen to your – your secret, and shoulder it too, and – and now I can tell you're hiding something, but I don't know _what_."

A beat of silence; he can sense her blinking up at him in surprise.

"Why won't you tell me?" he sighs, leaning back a little, further into her personal space. Despite what has apparently passed she still never instinctively shrinks from his touch – still responds to close contact in a way that suggests she derives comfort from it, still makes him doubt his own conjectures about the truth of her situation, whatever it may be.

"Ah, really, why do I care," he mutters crossly. Seo jerks upright in an instant, one of her arms slung through the crook of his elbow before he can so much as blink, before he can disappear. "So you do care," she says matter-of-factly, like it's something she really wants to confirm; he reddens instantly, and her mouth turns up at the corners just so.

"Well –" he says haltingly, trying to salvage what remains of his composure, "– it's too late to _not_ care, so I, yes. Of course it would be best if it – uh, the test result – was a false positive, b-but that's not to say I _wouldn't_ care even if you actually weren't pregnant. About you, that is, um."

She pins him with her gaze, waits for the grudging admission. "…Yes, okay, so I do care." She's also aware that this isn't the best time and place for her to be smiling, but she really can't help it, it stretches over her jaw snugly. Seo doesn't bother hiding it, instead she lets Wakamatsu notice it, revels in the sight of him blushing an even deeper shade of red when he does.

"I'll tell you tomorrow, 'kay," she says under the ringing of the bell that signals the end of break.

"Oh. Right. P-please do, senpai." Standing at full height, Wakamatsu's eyes fall naturally on his senpai's pronounced curves, the line of her body when she stretches back out on the floor, stark against the expanse of grey. Pregnant. If she really is pregnant, really has another life growing inside of her, it'll add another curve, another line, to those that already make up her frame – the way one would have to hold her would be different.

Though he can't picture her sleeping with a man at all, can't picture people in general sleeping with each other. As Wakamatsu carefully lies down on the concrete next to Seo, the queasiness in his gut, he thinks, ought to be good enough reason to justify his absence from the physical education class he's supposed to be attending.

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Days pass.

He's itching to go to her straight after last period ends, feet wanting to take him automatically across the building to where her classroom is; it's almost too hasty of him, and he purposely slows his steps through the stream of fellow students that mill in the hallways and corridors and stairwells. Tall as he is, pretending to stare off into the distance as he is, Wakamatsu nearly misses it when Seo brushes past his chest, movements quick and deliberate and seemingly intent on getting as far away from him as possible – which shouldn't be the case, because Seo-senpai always finds a way to stick close by, always yells his name in greeting. He turns; an eye narrowed, and sets off after her through the crowd.

His classmates stare.

His fellow basketball club first-years stare (especially hard).

He pays them no heed.

He does wonder where exactly she is running, though, where she will run if not ensconced in the safety of her own classroom, or the relative privacy of the school rooftop; especially when she half turns and sees him on her tail. She's still some distance ahead, but he's working hard to close that gap with his long strides and earnest stare. She tears away, full out sprinting through the corridors and past outraged teaching staff by this point. He rounds a corner, indoor shoes squeaking shrilly in protest, and sees the door of the choir clubroom slide emphatically shut. He still feels like he's won, like he's caught her; then he feels a little guilty for feeling like that.

Wakamatsu squats down; eyes on the shadow of her form, barely visible on the other side of the door; digs his fingertips into the smooth hardness of the wood. The door refuses to budge, and he sighs, resigned to having to talk through it.

"You promised," he reminds her gently, and prays to heaven that it doesn't sound like an accusation. Although she doesn't necessarily have a shell to retreat into, outside of all the rooms that she's been trying to close around her; all these physical replacements for the metaphorical barriers that she has never had to bother with, that she has no idea how to go about constructing in the first place. It is all very amateur of her, and strangely endearing.

Pressing his face to the crack between door and frame, Wakamatsu actually has to strain to pick out her voice, even as he struggles to get more than a sliver of a glimpse of the room and none of her, slumped as she is against the other side of the door. "Tell me," he asks plaintively, still slightly out of breath from the chase – and in the next moment has all the air knocked out of him by her response. "I'm not pregnant." His brain stalls, his tongue trips over the words. "Oh. You're n-not pregnant after all? Not pregnant anymore?"

"Not pregnant in the first place," she snaps. He blinks.

"That was just me giving acting a shot," she mutters reluctantly, slim fingers picking feverishly, he imagines, at a loose navy thread on the hem of her uniform skirt. "I made a deal with Kashima." It's as if she's expecting him to blow up at her any moment for giving him unfounded cause to worry about her – he can almost see it in the tense set of her shoulders, ready and waiting to cringe at the first sign of a raised voice, a disgusted, exasperated frown.

(He's more giddily confused and relieved than any of the above, though.)

Wakamatsu renews his efforts at opening the door, and at long last manages to inch it open wide enough to slip through, and so he does; finally finds himself on the same side as Seo, standing a mere meter away from him. Here and now, getting to see her face to face brings all the whirlwind emotions he's experienced in the past week, courtesy of her, before him again; _ah_, really, it's overwhelming; it's embarrassing.

He clears his throat, paces restlessly, shifts awkwardly on the balls of his feet – shuffles to face Seo instead of the chalkboard, the broom in the corner. She isn't able to look straight at him either, and that helps a little, even if not a lot.

"B-but that wasn't very nice of you, Seo-senpai," he whispers, hiding his face in his hands as it starts to burn, "to use me like that. I-I feel very much toyed with, do you know that?"

"I know," she exhales noisily, and then pauses for a long moment. "You still gonna be here?" she asks, one hand over her mouth; like she's going to vomit, or going to cry.

Wakamatsu peels his palms from his cheeks and slings an arm over his senpai's shoulder, pulls her close enough to rub cheeks. "Of course I'll be," he says lightly, reassuringly, sighing into her hair when she lets her head fall onto his shoulder.

It's in a quiet whisper that he adds, "Because we're friends now."

And, _oh_, doesn't she know it.


End file.
